第67章

Europe, with the exception of the corner occupied by the Eastern Empire, and which belonged rather to Asia than to it, seems then to have been nearly reduced to the state of one immense cattle-pasture.But the impetus that had been given still continued, and new hosts crowded on to share that, of which the last fragments had been divided.The vastness then of necessity took place.The hosts of the west and the south, under Theodoric and Elius, met those of the east and the north, under Attilla, on the plains of Champaigne.

The vastness of the masses and the violence of the shock are shown by the destruction produced; the accounts of the period rating the slaughter variously at from one hundred and sixty-two thousand to three hundred thousand.

From this period the great body neither much advancing nor receding, was agitated chiefly by fierce internal commotions.The time when their violence terminated marks the second period, when the general prevalence of agriculture, lessening the number of warriors, diminished the extent and frequency of wars.The knowledge of the elements of it, and of the other arts, diffused throughout the various multitude that now peopled the Continent, could not forever lie dormant.It has been already observed, that the strength of their effective desire of accumulation, had been such as to produce a tendency among them to give greater capacity even to the materials of which they had the command in the northern regions, though at the expense of changing them into instruments of somewhat slower return, by converting their lands from pasture to tillage.This tendency became inevitably stronger, as they advanced into more fertile soils and milder climates.The revolution itself took place gradually.The exact date of the preponderance of the one condition over the other, cannot, perhaps, be determined but by the effects produced by its arrival.It is only in the state of hunters, or shepherds, that nation can literally go to war with nation.In the agricultural state, it is not the men of the nation, but a small part of them, the soldiery, that fight.Taking this as the criterion, we might fix the reign of Charlemagne as that, in which war, as the business of European nations, properly ceased.The conclusion of that monarch's reign, has sometimes been reckoned the commencement of a period of weakness in the several states, and of want of ability in their monarchs.The historian, it is true, for centuries afterwards, finds no events that he esteems great to record.His art can call up no pictures of heroes leading armies to the field, conquering, or being conquered, overthrowing, or establishing kingdoms.Nevertheless, if the view we are taking is correct, it is from this era that we must date the commencement of strength, not of weakness.The people of Europe then began to rise in the scale of industry.They commenced a new era, to which no one can assign a positive termination, because it became their occupation to conquer nature, and not man, and, to the fruits of the one conquest, we can set no limit, whereas the utmost advantages of the other are very speedily exhausted.

It may here be observed, that the difference of the strength of the principle of accumulation in nations of hunters, and in pastoral nations, seems to mark out a very opposite destiny to a great country overrun by the one, to that which would await it from being subdued by the other.

The naturally low degree of strength of the accumulative principle among nations of hunters, prevents them, as we have seen, from forming instruments of sufficiently slow return to embrace the materials to which the arts of civilized life might give capacity.While in their possession, therefore, they lie unemployed, and useless.The progress of civilization and art, over the continent of North America, is now, every day, bringing to light traces of their former presence, and evidence, consequently, of the existence there at some remote period, of a people far superior in these respects to the tribes that occupied all but the southern parts, when discovered by Europeans.The question has been asked, how did it happen that they, and the knowledge and power they possessed, utterly perished? In other instances, civilization has either protected its possessors, or, if they were overcome, has reacted on their conquerors, and spreading among them, has, so to say, subjugated and governed them in turn.The history of our own barbarian ancestors has been quoted, as a circumstantial account of this seemingly natural progress.But, if the principles, the operation of which forms our present subject, be correct, they furnish a sufficient cause for the diversity of effects, flowing from the two events, and show, that, instead of there being any reason for surprise at the hunter of the woods disdaining the labors and rewards of civilization, it is rather our business to inquire how he could ever have been led to adopt them.Had the nations whom the north poured forth on the south of Europe, been hunters, and, had no extraneous cause intervened, it is not improbable, that that continent would, even at the present day, have been one wide forest from side to side.